spring song BY LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936-2010)
the green of Jesus is breaking the ground and the sweet smell
of delicious Jesus is opening the house and the dance of Jesus
music has hold of the air and the world is turning in the body
of Jesus and the future is possible Hello there. Corinna
Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week. This week, we’re reading
“Spring Song” by Lucille Clifton. Jackie O’Ryan will read the poem, and
then I’ll be back with some brief commentary. Thank you, Jackie,
and thank you to Eric Evans for the beautiful video that accompanied
Jackie’s reading. Lucille Clifton was born in 1936 and died in
2010. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and attended Howard
University and later SUNY Fredonia. Her poetry was discovered by the
great Langston Hughes in the late 1960s, and included in his famous 1970
anthology, The Poetry of the Negro. Clifton was widely recognized during
her lifetime: she was the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets,
won the Ruth Lilly Award, the National Book Award, and was twice a
finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her poetry is known for its depth and
brevity. Peggy Rosenthal has written of Clifton’s work: “The first thing
that strikes us about Lucille Clifton’s poetry is what is missing:
capitalization, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. We see a poetry
so pared down that its spaces take on substance, become a shaping
presence as much as the words themselves.” In the words of another
critic, Clifton writes “physically small poems with enormous and
profound inner worlds.” Her poetry is known for its “moral quality,” its
“looming humaneness” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lucille-clifton).
All of that is certainly true of “spring song.” This poem is just
45 words long, but it evokes a world. It’s spring and Clifton uses
language that appeals to different senses: “green… breaking the ground”;
a “sweet / smell,”; music that “has hold of the air”—sights, smells,
sounds. Spring is an immersive experience! But these sensory experiences
are more than merely physical. The name of Jesus leaps out at us again
and again: four times in ten short lines. “the green of Jesus / is
breaking the ground,” “the sweet / smell of delicious Jesus / is opening
the house and / the dance of Jesus music / has hold of the air.” Where
we anticipate hearing about new shoots pushing through the earth, or the
smell of flowers or the music of songbirds, we get Jesus… Jesus… Jesus.
The poem ends, “the world is turning / in the body of Jesus and / the
future is possible.” Jesus is everywhere. With remarkable
brevity, this poem captures the hope of spring—which, for Christians (at
least those living in the northern hemisphere!) is inextricably tied
with the hope of Easter. As a medieval hymn has it, “Lo, the fair beauty
of earth, from the death of the winter arising! Every good gift of the
year now with its Savior returns.” Spring is more than a season: it is a
reminder, a metaphor, a sign of the rising of Jesus. And the
Resurrection of Jesus is not just an event, but a pervading, living
reality, which fills everything, keeps the world turning, and, as
Clifton says, makes the future possible. Short poem, short
commentary! I want to let Lucille Clifton have the last word.
Here, she shares some wonderful insights in video reflections she did
for the Academy of American Poets. Watch the videos here:
Lucille Clifton: What is poetry?
https://youtu.be/qfYCRZ9LVh4
Lucille Clifton: Where ideas come from
https://youtu.be/50cQSk_sF4Q
Hear Lucille Clifton read “Spring Song”
https://youtu.be/WoG29TbMW9A
|